- Farmington Hills officials are fuming over a glut of unsold Cybertrucks being stored in the city.
- Tesla has been parking the EVs at a shopping center earmarked for major redevelopment.
- Officials say the electric vehicles violate zoning codes and are warning the property owner.
They’re just so damn ugly. One pulled up next to me at a light the other day and it looked like a cockroach skittered into my side vision.
I’m honestly impressed by how many I see. It’s probably just such an eyesore that I notice every one the enters my fov without fail. I always give those death machine a wide berth, as not only is the vehicle itself deadly, I don’t trust the drivers in the slightest.
Here’s a lot I pass by every day.
Aren’t these atrocities full of nice lithium batteries? If so, confiscated cars can be scraped for parts with the batteries going to hospitals, schools, the ACAB offices and fire departments to be used as backup electricity.
I’m surprised nobody has stolen the rims or the batteries, or even tried to steal the catalytic converter.
What catalytic converter? They’re electric.
The metal body panels that have just been haphazardly hung onto the frame on the other hand…
Hence “tried”.
ACAB offices? Never knew they had offices?
Considering the fear people have because EV’s could burn all the time, this is a massive threat to environment and should be fixed (or towed & billed).
Just set them on fire.
This was my first thought. But the top comment talking about the batteries and what not going to hospitals and emergency centers made me feel different, hopeful even. Like, a feeling of organized chaotic good anarchy. Why burn the cars completely, when we can resources the useful parts, and then burn the left over scraps of the worthless useless billionaire? I mean… car.
Oh I mean I totally agree, the “burn them” was just a reflex. I agree that scavenging them for parts would be magnitudes more beneficial to everyone.
Scavenge then burn.
Think of the environment. Scavenge them, fill them with waste after as they are dumpsters anyway. Let Tesla deal with the disposal, will cost them loads of money, running them further towards bankruptcy.
Together with the billionaires.
By sitting here and waiting, we are all kind of setting them on fire a little bit. Statistically true statement.
The property owners should seize them for unpaid storage fee’s. That has happened in my state. Putting your property on someone elses property is considered a tacit admission of a debt when it comes to storage. Ironically there is another law that states you can’t charge for more than six months storage without a signed agreement. However there is nothing regulating how much that fee is. Case in point a person failed to pick up late model car at a towing company for two years. The towing company gave the owner a huge bill and they went to court to get it reduced to six months. The towing company just resubmitted a bill for six months at a increased rate that equaled the amount of the original bill. By the time the asshole who should have come and got their car sooner got through the bill had went up again. It was quite entertaining. to watch.
Everywhere you look in Illinois you’ll see variations of “unauthorized vehicles will be towed at owners expense.” So I don’t know what those guys’ problem is; impound them.
Tow them and fine them. Simple as that.
Towing them without putting them in tow mode will total them.
Sounds like the vehicle owners’ problem. “Unauthorized vehicles will be towed at the owners expense.”
Even better.
These ugly things need to be in “tow mode”?
I was going to say what a stupid idea, but that’s just the tip of the stupid ice berg.
Any vehicle with AWD has special towing considerations.
For the owner, yes. For the tower, no.
… What does that mean?
Every one of these that gets towed unexpectedly is totalled?
You have to use a flatbed tow truck, same as Subarus and other AWD cars.
Tow trucks have never cared about wrecking their cargo before. Why should they care for Cybertrucks?
Oh well.
The city should just confiscate all of them. I mean, at this point they are abandoned on city property.
And send Tesla the bill for recycling cost
…you mean private property, read the article.
And do what with them? Seems like an unnecessary hassle.
Scrap them, and also fine the fuck out of Tesla for it.
If they did it proper and put it in the paper for 2 weeks that they have to be claimed by Tesler, then they can auction them off. Even bricked they have to be worth more in parts than scrap…
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Monstertruck v. Cybertruck: Dawn of Justice
few cans of gasoline and some matches could go a long way to help solving this problem
definitely would rather see people
stealingrecycling the batteriesYou are right since they are made from stainless Steal and lift-ium.
By setting them in fire, cyber trucks are recycled. They return to the Earth from whence they came!
steel to steel , lithium to lithium.
I was thinking pragmatically about the availability of Lithium as a resource and not so much about the idea of Cybertrucks just ceasing to exist
That’s what they’re hoping for. If they all caught fire Tesla could put in an insurance claim and get their money back.
Large companies don’t always insure like that. They may self insure.
Tesla owners usually have to get insurance through Tesla because most insurance companies refuse to underwrite those death traps.
I’d rather we didn’t pollute things further… a wrecking ball would do fine.
Anyone know how to hotwire a steamroller?
Actually, steamrollers and most industrial equipment have surprisingly weak locks and key ignition systems. Usually, the biggest obstacle is the window itself.
The keys are usually on a hook in the foreman’s trailer. ;)
And they often all use the same key. Which you can get online
Honestly, the thing you have to worry for the most is getting caught making a difference.
Sounds like construction equipment is as secure as US democracy.
I could probably figure it out.
Or fly a drone overhead and drop paint or Liquid Ass.
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Same thing is happening in Europe with Chinese EVs. Chinese EVs are piling up at European ports because they’ve gone unsold and the carmakers were way too optimistic or it’s some sort of book keeping trickery to rack up the sales figures.
Is that still the case though? I can only find articles from 2024 about this
Executive bonus target, deliver x number of cars in Europe. Job done!
Did he park them in a lot away from cameras, hoping there would be some “demonstrations” that would then allow him to claim insurance money? Does the policy cover “domestic terrorism”?
Did you know the Cybertruck was designed to mimic a Porsche? Specifically, this one.
Except it has the durability, function and safety of this one.
God the environmental damage caused by making all these batteries, only to be used in a cyber truck and dumped in a car park.
Remember when Elon was pretending to be saving the environment, well now he isn’t.
Elon was always about making money. The marketing department was all about saving things.
Batteries can be recycled, reused or repurposed. It’s nowhere near as damaging as drilling for/refining/shipping/burning oil and we decided we are perfectly okay with that.
Batteries can be recycled, reused or repurposed. It’s nowhere near as damaging as drilling for/refining/shipping/burning oil
Why is the alternative to an EV SUV a combustion engine SUV? Why isn’t cycling and public transport?
I’m not saving ICEs are good and EV are bad but that maybe… both aren’t great anyway, especially when actual alternatives that make people healthier do exist.
Biking doesn’t always work well in the us because shit is spread out further.
Anything else but driving doesn’t work well in the US because the “way of life” is indeed car centric. It will never change without infrastructure, including but not limited to bike lanes. Large distances are possible with (electric) bike but this at least needs to be safe.
So… yes I’m not advocating for somebody leaving the middle of absolute nowhere to give up on their cars. This is not even about cities (as the article mentions a parking lot I assume it’s next or even inside a city).
No, my point instead is to question the false dichotomy.
I agree we shouldn’t have set things up as we did but it’s done and there is no way I’m biking what would be a 40 minute drive to microcenter.
I did spend last week biking 45min somewhere and back (so 1h30) for 4 days in a row. It’s not for everyone … but not only it’s feasible but (and I know it will sound crazy to some) I actually did enjoy it. On the last day I even did the last trip with a new friend, chatting the entire ride.
Again, I’m not arguing that anybody should do that, or have fun doing, only that’s it not impossible.
The lithium mining process is laborious, dangerous, and releases radioactive elements into groundwater and into the air as mine tailings. Not to mention, most of Earth’s lithium reserves are in Chile, Bolivia, and Rwanda. With Western investors backing corrupt national governments, this means that exploitative labor (read: slavery) is the primary means of extraction.
It is, in comparison to other extraction methods, literally just as bad.
Mexico has a giant deposit but they insist on silly things like environmental regulations.
Actually lithium isn’t the long term plan, it’s just the plan for today. Sodium is the long term. But huge lithium deposits exists in the US and China too.
You can even filter it out of the oceans. It’s just not worth the cost right now
Agreed. The person you’re responding to is using the same logic as “wind turbines kill birds”, “EVs run on FF electricity”, etc. Anyone trying to convince you to let perfection get in the way of progress is almost certainly being disingenuous, or at best has been talked into it by someone who was.
Lithium mining is horrible for the environment too. I don’t think that’s a bit improvement over gas\oil
It happens once and is reusable forever. It’s a massive improvement.
Sure, and it’s a good interim tech until we get things like hydrogen working better.
Dude hydrogen is a bait and switch. We’ve had hydrogen engine tech forever. As for the source, you CAN get it from water after putting in more energy into it than you get out of it, or you can just refine it from oil. Guess what the plan has always been?
Hydrogen is just a way to greenwash big oil.
there are modern ways of doing it they’re pretty efficient from what I’ve been reading using natural gas and water or electrolysis but I’m no scientist so I’m not going to try to explain it here I think maybe you should look into some more modern methods than what you’re talking about.
Natural gas is not green. Not even close. It’s just more convenient. Electrolysis cannot magically be made more efficient here either. It takes a certain amount of energy to break those chemical bonds and you can’t magically break those bonds using less energy. The amount of energy you get from burning that hydrogen is less than what you put in to break those bonds via electrolysis.
I actually do know what I’m talking about here.
They won’t be, though :(
Lithium is pretty stable. Those dumbtrucks will rot there for some time, then got reposessed and eventually moved to a recycling plant, and almost all of the lithium will eventually be used for something useful.
They probably won’t even actually recycle the batteries. The packs and batteries are still gonna be good. They’ll just pull the whole battery packs out and use them in other vehicles or stationary storage.
Probably. Unless it’s something very proprietary that is specifically incompatible with everything, I wouldn’t put that past the current Tesla people.
Jerryrigeverything has already demonstrated Tesla packs can be used for other vehicles. He made an electric military humvee.
Afaik, both him, Superfast Matt, and others were using packs from the comparatively sane Teslas, ones that were designed by engineers, not by a child with dementia. I am afraid to assume what the poorly rendered rustbucket is made of.
They absolutely will. Those minerals are valuable.
Wait, where is this parking lot again?
They literally already are and have been for years.
I thought it was widely accepted that lithium mining is far more harmful to the environment than drilling for oil, and that the hope was that not burning oil/gas we offset the mining (to the point if u drive ur electric car x miles it’s cleaner overall than if u drive an ICE vehicle). Do you have information that states otherwise?
I thought it was widely accepted . . .
No. Not even close.
I’ve got a nonsense idea with no sources do you have sources to contradict it?
Start with sources that back-up the nonsense you just made up. Because there is just no possible way that extracting 1 EV’s worth of lithium is equivalent pollution to the expected 200-400 thousand miles of ICE driving it offsets.
Let’s maybe not shorthand Internal Combustion Engine for a little while lol
Oil spills are far worse for the environment than mining could be. Also, electric cars keep air pollution in cities down. Not saying there is zero environmental impact but mining is not nearly as bad as fossil fuels can be, and same could be said for nuclear as well.
The batteries could be salvaged and used for something useful.
EVs were never about saving the environment. It does so much damage making a new EV. If companies wanted to save the environment they would have invested in refurbishing and updating older used cars.
EDIT: Sad how many ignorant people are down voting this without even attempting to look up the environmental cost of making a brand new car loading with rare earth minerals. While destroying a slightly older car that’s already been built and whose environmental impact has already been dealt with and would best be put to use rather than sit in a junk yard for 50 years.
Too many corporate boot lickers believing the car companies based on nothing more than “Green” buzz words.
The most environmentally friendly thing you can do as a car owner is just keep the oldest car u have alive as long as possible. Cash for lunkers wasn’t about getting people in cleaner cars, it was about subsidizing companies so they could sell more while destroying perfectly good vehicles. This shredded the used car market and we are paying for it now. Literally. If you need to get a new car anyways, sure an ev or hybrid might be the way. But keeping a stinky old diesel running, while it may seem counterintuitive, is the cleaner thing to do. What we wmit driving pails in comparison to the production pollution associated with all these throw away cars.
The most environmentally friendly thing you can do as a car owner is stop being one. Ride a bike. Take Mass Transit. Walk.
That’s a great idea unless you are rural. City folks can do these things far easier than people that the nearest store is 10 miles away.
Ride a horse! ;)
keeping a horse is a very expensive thing you know… lol
Compared to what? Horses are 100% recyclable amd biodegradeable.
Cars, even ev’s. Not so much.
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You say that like it’s already happening at scale. Get real.
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It is technically recyclable, but it’s so cost prohibitive compared to just building new that no one really does it at this point. Maybe someday.
It’s almost certainly something that will get worked out on its own. There isn’t enough volume to justify lithium battery recycling at this point. After a decade of EVs being mainstream, there will be.
That said, GP is correct that EVs are about saving the car industry, not about saving the environment. Getting better walking/biking/public transportation infrastructure is the way to go. Ebikes, in particular, open up biking transportation to a lot of people who hesitated before. The amount of lithium used in them is tiny compared to cars, and the market can likely be served by sodium-ion batts, anyway.
Fuck off, shill.
Fucking tow em.
And charge them fees. Just like they’d do to any individual. The city could make some real bank.
Ah, they’re parked on private property, which means the property owner needs to have them towed. Which means the city has to notify the property owner (they have) ahead of the city doing the tow order. That it’s a derelict shopping mall means that the property owner likely doesn’t care. There’s also the complication of the city not wanting to piss off a commercial property owner.
But yeah, the end result should be towing, with daily storage fees racking up until Tesla comes and pays up. Tow lots don’t fuck around.
The only caveat is that they’re violating zoning codes. That means the city can directly act on it.
Of course, they likely have to go through the notification process before towing them, but they probably don’t have to have the property owners permission to do so. More likely they’ll warn the property owner a few times, then send them the bill for towing.
I imagine the city can tow, after following some kind of notification schedule. But the property owner isn’t going to pay the bill; not their vehicles, why would they give a fuck? Tesla is going to argue that the property owner should pay, since the violation is against the property owner. Tesla might not care, either, they’ve got nothing to do with the vehicles since nobody wants to buy them. If you just leave them in the impound lot, there’s no bill to pay. Since they’re unsold vehicles, there aren’t even titles for the city to put a lien on for the impound fee.
On the other hand, I know where a bunch of Crybertrucks (I’m leaving it) are, in case anyone has a bunch of extra spray paint they need to use up.
They’re probably hoping they get vandalized so they can collect insurance on them
MTIPGU
(Make Tesla Insurance Premiums Go Up)
Because the property owner is responsible for the things on their property, especially if they’re violating code. It’s the property owner’s responsibility to have them removed, even if they don’t own them, so if they don’t after being warned and the city hauls them off, they can get stuck with the bill for the tow.
They won’t have to pay for the storage of the trucks, though. Just the initial tow. Then they can sue whomever dumped them to try to recoup the cost.
But literally all they have to do is call a towing company who would be more than happy to remove them.
That it’s a derelict shopping mall means that the property owner likely doesn’t care.
Reasonable guess is that Tesla is paying rent to the mall owner. Is it usual to store unsold cars out in the open for long periods? I know they sit in outdoor new car lots at dealerships, but I figured maybe it usually wasn’t for very long.
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Scrap’em
Put 'em in a stew
Cy-ber-trucks
There is probably a lot of battery cells that can be salvaged.
Plug them into the grid and use the damn storage.
Or take the batteries and do it more efficiently.
Fuck those stupid cars.
Outside of the environment you say?..
The sides fell off?
Possibly better than the front falling off.
